After watching this creep run roughshod over the national polity (for what, 30 years now?) this latest affront seems to me to have an “At long last sir, have you no decency?” quality to it. Hopefully, defecting sponsors & electoral debacle for the neo-fascists he serves will lead to this unsightly carbuncle on the ass of humanity exit by the same door as Glenn Beck.

Limbaugh is an entertainer/businessman. He is entirely given over to measuring his performance by his ratings and their effect on advertising. The ratings are up or they are down, but they are never negative.

It might be fun to circulate a letter, basically one of censure, flooding his ISP. It would be a lot more fun to circulate a list of his advertisers to boycott.

Think this would be more true of some of his pals. Glenn Beck said so in as many words in one interview…it struck me, in context, that one of his tearful episodes was actually his squelching back his own laughter.

Thing about RL is that I think he really believes this sort of thing. Over the last 50-odd years, bigots have learned to hold their tongues for the most part. But the election of Obama has spawned a cadre of people who have provided ways to give vent that which they previously were prevented from thinking or saying, through the dog-whistle racism, hidden between the lines.

The same mechanism has been used for those who have problems with women, as with those who are under/unemployed, or find themselves having to answer to one and have lost a sense of personal power. Only thing they’ve been able to do until recently is to buy a gun and go shoot off a box; now a nominally acceptable political response is being provided to them.

The tip-off is where they no longer even bother to make up substantive arguments against whatever, but make it a matter of just “stopping Obama,” the translation and subtext being, “stop the n—–.” Karl Rove, astute as he is, has been a terrific enabler, as when he provided that line, that Obama…”thinks he’s smarter than you…arugula eating…..leaning up on the wall at the country club laughing at you.” Would all of that have been trotted out, or been effective, against Clinton? Against Obama it has resonated.

Rush Limbaugh, the last person I would look to for an opinion aside, here’s the logic I use:

Health insurance covers one for risks. I might get sick or injured and need treatment, so I buy insurance to cover the potential cost. It makes sense to cover preventive care or medication because that will lower the risk of what might happen and therefor will lower the cost of insurance.

For a woman, pregnancy is a risk. Accidental pregnancies are to be avoided. But the preventive idea is the same – things that will reduce the risk of the unwanted condition to occur in the normal course of life are to be encouraged by the insurer, who would normally be responsible for the cost of aborting an unwanted pregnancy.

Compare this to a pill that would reduce the appetite being a good thing to cover for someone who easily puts on weight because the medical consequences of obesity are, pun intended, big. Isn’t Viagra covered by insurance? Isn’t that because it can help to maintain a sex life which is considered to be a normal part of life for a man?

As I see it, the fuss is all about sexual activity. Sex is a normal part of life, just like eating or breathing, though some object to it being so and wish to isolate sexual practice to certain conditions they specify.

If one thinks that sex is wrong unless for procreation, then the contraceptive coverage looks like providing something for a reprehensible recreational activity that is optional and has nothing to do with health insurance.

Insurance, however, is all about risk. The insured is not required to be on a diet, for example, to avoid obesity. People get fat, people get injured, people get pregnant. In all these cases, premiums reflect the risk.

My insurer is not my moral arbiter, nor would an insurance company want to be. It is the third party with authoritarian views wishing to intervene that is causing the uproar.

If they get hauled in front of a war crimes tribunal, like Nazi hate-mongerer Julius Streicher or those guys who used Rwandan radio to direct the genocide, then the precedent has been established that it is possible for an entertainer to be liable for the acts that he encourages. The question is, what is America’s standard going to be short of the aftermath of a genocide?

I suppose if one had secretly gone over to “The Other Side” and needed to convince one’s Partner of one’s intent never to be intimate ever again with The Fairer Sex offending them all forever is the way to go.